


the last thing to go

by decinq



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Mental Instability, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Canon, Stranger Things Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 14:25:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19747543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decinq/pseuds/decinq
Summary: On day four, he resets his own broken nose. On day twenty, he starts talking to himself.





	the last thing to go

**Author's Note:**

> i studied some soviet history and lit in school and found it very fascinating but that was years ago and i am by no means an expert. all mistakes are my own.
> 
> "Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black. We can't tell if it will survive us. But we can be sure that it's the last thing to go."  
> \- martin amis, _the second plane_

Jim swings, hips before shoulders and the bat cracks as it hits the ball. The sun is in his eyes but he knows it’s fair. Drops the bat and runs. 

George is up next, his sister, ten years old and eager, clamps her hands together. “You got this, Georgie!” George doesn’t flinch. Let’s the first pitch go, just like coach always tells them to. Too low - ball one. 

Jim takes a step further off the base. Pitcher doesn’t check on him, so he takes another step. George adjusts his footing. Jim bounces on his toes. The pitcher throws, and Jim starts running, facing home. George swings, hips before shoulders. The bat cracks. The ball goes and goes. 

As Jim runs through home, he catches Joyce’s eyes through the fence behind the plate. She’s cheering, standing. Jim smiles at her, stops to pick up George’s discarded bat. 

“That’s my brother,” he hears her say to an older kid next to her on the bleachers.

Jim’s been counting the days by meals. If they give him three a day, it’s been 41 days that he’s been awake. Could have been here for longer. If they give him two a day, which seems more likely, it’s been 62 days. If it’s one a day, he’s fucked.

On day four, he resets his own broken nose. On day twenty, he starts talking to himself.

Jim turns sixteen in March. His dad dies that September. Everyone in Hawkins shows up at the service. His mom cries and cries. Afterwards, Jim and George sit on the hood of Jim’s car, not new but newly inherited, and Jim says, “Fucking--” and stops. He wants to throw something but doesn’t. Doesn’t have anything to throw. 

“Go on,” George says. As if he knows what Jim’s going to say. As if he doesn’t. 

“I’m not going to miss him,” Jim spits. He wants to cry, but not for his dad. 

George hums. 

“I’m glad he’s gone,” Jim says, and feels tired. George knows. Everyone knows. Jim’s shown up to school with black eyes. Jim’s dad may have had a nicer job than most of Hawkins, more money than George’s family, who are poor the same way Jim’s is middle class. The American dream. Jim’s fucking living nightmare. 

Jim starts hallucinating on day forty. He wakes up and finds Murray sitting cross-legged, back leaning against the door to Jim’s cell. 

“Jesus,” Jim says. Murray smiles. “You’re not real.”

Murray raises his eyebrows. “Door would be unlocked and open if you were.”

“После драки кулаками не машут” Murray says.

“Great,” Jim says. 

“Без труда́ не вытащишь и рыбку из пруда́.”

“Fuck you.”

Down the hall, a door creaks open. Muffled voices. Someone screams. 

Murray disappears. 

They step off the ride, and Joyce doesn’t let go of his hand, he doesn’t let go either. He’s dizzy. He rubs his thumb up her forefinger, back down. “I’m dizzy,” she says, and it sounds light even though she’s already scanning the crowd. There’s so much to say. Nothing he can say. 

George gets drafted when they’re 23. 

Jim enlists the next day. 

They watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and for a week, any time Jim does anything around the cabin, El peeps up. “You know what you’re doin’?”

Jim plays along. “Theoretically.” 

Jim’s eyes open slowly. He’s not sure if it’s malnutrition, but he feels like his eyesight is getting worse. It’s either day 191 or 287. The difference is getting bigger. The math helps. Takes him a few minutes.

He thinks it would be easier if they spoke to him, even if it were in Russian. If he knew what they wanted. If he could tell why they had him. If he could figure out why they won’t just let him die. 

It’s either February or it’s May. He think February because of the cold, the way it whistles even through the thick, cement walls of the building. 

They spray him down every once in a while, the water near freezing and salty. Keep him blindfolded and bound the entire time. They feed him. They turn the lights on. They turn them off. His clothes don’t fit. His beard is long. 

He sometimes thinks he can hear the ocean, the back and forth of water. When it’s stormy, the waves sound like the crack of a bat. 

George dies right before his tour is set to end. Jim doesn’t hear about it until he gets home. Joyce is 19 and she has a baby. He’s almost a year old, Jim learns. Jim holds him as Joyce makes them lunch. 

“Hi Jonathan,” he coos, and the baby blabs at him. “Is he walking yet?” He asks into the kitchen. 

“No, thank god,” Joyce laughs. She’s so young. She’s so much younger than him. She seems just as tired. Just as sad. 

“It’s going to happen eventually,” Jim laughs. She sets a plate of sandwiches on the table. “I’m sorry Georgie didn’t get to meet ‘im.”

“Me too,” she says, and sighs. He remembers when she was just a kid. How she followed George around. How smart she was, even six years behind them. He remembers letting her drive his car when she was fourteen, on the way back from the pool. She made it all the way home. Steady hands. 

And now she’s barely done high school and she has a baby. A prophecy written in her upbringing. “How’s Lonnie?” He asks, knowing full-well how Lonnie is. Not really caring but caring about her, worrying about her. 

'

Jim goes back to Vietnam. It’s hot, but he gets used to it faster than he had the first time. Thicker skin. He’s good with a gun, gets used to sleeping on the ground. 

He tries to think about El, tries to hear her voice. Thinks and thinks and thinks himself into a desperate kind of anger. He does push-ups on the floor until he’s tired. Hopes she’s okay.

He does push-ups on the floor of his cell until he can’t anymore. Sits on the edge of his cot and pushes the heel of his palm into his eyes until he sees stars.

“You know what you’re doin’?” He hears her say. 

“Theoretically,” he says to himself. 

“Раз на раз не приходится,” Murray says from inside Jim’s head. 

Diane is kind and smiles at him and doesn’t mind that he works long hours. They date for three months before Jim’s mom dies. He doesn’t ask her to come back with her and she doesn’t seem to mind. 

Joyce tays until the small crowd of neighbours and his mom’s few friends trickle out.

He feels like his dad when he says it, but he asks anyway. “Want to go for a drink?”

She nods, smiles a small, sad kind of smile. “Sure.”

They don’t talk in the car. Jim stares out the window. Resists the urge to lean his cheek on the glass. 

“This was the first car I ever drove,” she says, glancing over at him quickly before turning her eyes back to the road. She shoulder checks before turning into the small lot outside the bar. 

“Hmm,” he hums. “I remember.”

She parks. Get out of the car. He scrambles to follow her. 

When they step inside, the guy behind the bar, some younger kid that Jim doesn’t recognize, says, “He’s not here, Joyce!”

She waves him off, gestures towards the bar, away from the darts. Jim nods.

“Lonnie come here a lot?” Jim asks. Joyce shrugs, and she seems so small on the stool, her feet nowhere near touching the floor. 

“How’s Jonathan?” Jim asks, and Joyce smiles. She looks tired but she’s beautiful, really. Big eyes and a good laugh. A genuine smile. She orders them both whiskeys and he raises an eyebrow at her but doesn’t say anything. 

It’s funny, Jim thinks, how the memory of a person, of Joyce, struggles to fit beside the woman beside him. Like two puzzle pieces that almost but don’t quite fit. So much has changed for her. For him, too. 

She talks about Jonathan, and he feels relief. She clearly loves him, find joy in being a mother that her parents never did. Jim avoids asking about Lonnie by ordering them another round. 

“What’s it like living in the city?” She asks, and he’s thankful to talk about it, actually. He tells her about the academy, about his apartment, about the VA downtown that he goes to twice a week. He doesn’t mention Diane, doesn’t know what to say about it so says nothing. 

She talks with her hands, which is the same as when they were kids. Her hands are so small - he thinks about catching the one closest to him. Comparing how hers fits against his, palm to palm. Avoids it by ordering them another round. 

“I shouldn’t have too much more if I’m going to drive us back,” and then, “One more probably won’t hurt.”

When Jim moves back to Hawkins, he doesn’t seek her out. Sees her around sometimes but keeps his head low, pulls his hat down. 

On day 244 or day 366, Jim thinks about dying. Thinks about fighting the guards until they shoot him. Butt his face in with a gun. Thinks about Murray’s voice in his ear, leaning over the seat to say to Joyce, “he reminds you of a bad relationship.” Thinks about arresting Lonnie, killing Lonnie, killing the guards. He thinks --

He thinks about El. Imagines her looking for him. Imagines her not. Imagines Joyce opening up the door to his cell and saying, “You were supposed to pick me up on Friday.” 

Jim always felt, when Sarah died, that something in him unravelled. A thread of wool pulling and pulling until the sweater of his being was just a pile, no shape, no meaning, no function.

When El came to stay with him, eased into it, got comfortable, trusted him--he realized he was wrong. When Sarah died, part of him went with her. The part that felt the budding joys of parenthood, the future he thought they would have. When Sarah died, he didn’t become a pile of yarn. He became a boarded up old house. Memories in there of better times, but lots of dust. Broken glass, rotting floorboards, locked up doors. 

He thinks about Eleven and he thinks about Joyce. He knows he’s let them down. It was inevitable. But, he thinks, it was despite his best efforts. He was passed out at the finish line. I wasn’t because he couldn’t stop; it was because he couldn’t keep going.

“Thanks for driving me home,” Jim says. Joyce is parked outside his mom’s empty house. He’s only half-packed it. 

“Yeah,” she says. She’s not moving. 

“You wanna come in?” He asks, and he doesn’t know why he asked, doesn’t know what he means. Doesn’t know what to expect. 

“I’ll walk you in,” she says. Takes the keys out of the ignition. 

They stumble slowly to the door. Jim wants to put his arm around Joyce’s shoulder. Doesn’t. Leans against the front door and fumbles for his keys in his pocket even though he knows he left the door unlocked. 

“I have ‘em,” Joyce says, sucking in her lips. She’s holding back a laugh, he can tell. 

“Thanks,” he says. And then again. “Thank you.”

“It’s no worries, Hop,” she says, and she pats his arm. Squeezes. 

He nods and, suddenly, wants to cry. “Thank you. I--”

“It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”

“I wanted to tell you,” he says to no one. “I wanted to say forget Lonnie, come inside.”

“I missed you so much,” he says to his empty cell. “I miss you so much.”

“I remember when you used to tag along behind George and me,” he says to the Joyce inside his head. “You were so cute.” He smiles up at the ceiling above his cot.

“Past tense?” The Joyce inside his head laughs a bit, kind of shy but not really. Daring. He chuckles. “What?”

“It’s nothing,” he says to no one. “It’s just nice. It’s a nice thing to remember.”

Jim hears the guards outside his door, and Murray says, “Старый друг лучше новых двух.”

“Fuck off,” Jim says. Rolls over. 

When Will first gets released from the hospital, he checks in on them constantly, falling into the lifelong pattern of keeping tabs on Joyce Byers in the back of his mind. Only this time, he’s the one following her around. The one chasing after some experience he hasn’t found yet.

She struggles, sure, but she’s a good mom and she has a family. She’s created her own little section of space and time that’s full of love, laughter, nurturing and tenderness. Jim doesn’t--

“Kids are tough,” he says, thinking of George when was just a boy with blood on his teeth, always pulling Jim out of harm’s way.

“No,” she says quietly. “They just get that way.”

Murray says, “Лучше поздно, чем никогда.”

Jim closes his eyes, sighs. Tired. Someone down the hall starts screaming.

Jim opens his eyes.

The single light bulb above him flickers, then dies.

Jim closes his eyes. In his head, El says, “Hop?”

The light bulb explodes. The door to his cell swings open.

**Author's Note:**

> all of murray's russian is idioms that i found by reading funny half-russian listicles from google searches. 
> 
> on a personal note, i haven't written anything in over 2.5 years and so while this is rusty, it felt really nice. really, really nice. i love this show!!!!!!!


End file.
